tales from the rock

wow - one month blows by.  just goes to show you how easy it is to fall off the wagon.  once you allow the weakness to take over, it’s a snowball effect.  the 10:00 am tickler on the calendar hasn’t been working this summer, since that happens to be the time where everyone is finally in work mode, so stuff starts to happen.  I think I’ll have to try an earlier time.

topic to get me going again was this dude.  5 years from Poland, he gets into every single Ivy league school (MIT turned him down.)  doesn’t say if he goes to a private school, but he does pretty much imply the school itself wasn’t that tough compared to the gulag he was in before.

now, contrary to some beliefs, this is not the goal for the baby - not the sole goal anyway.  there’s a lot of life to live after college, and being accepted into a bunch of ivys becomes irrelevant on day 1 of whichever school you go to.  we’re looking for ways to prep her for life, and hopefully success and greatness throughout.  one side effect of working for the P, is seeing more than a few wasted $500,000 educations (k-college).

however, that’s  not the amazing thing about the article.  the amazing thing, is that some editor thought that this pronunciation guide  - Lukasz Zbylut (pronounced Loo-KASH Zbeh-LOOT) - was going to clear anything up.  maybe I is not properly edukatid enough to know how to pronounce ‘ZBEH.’

see - public school sucks.

coincidentally, I get home, and on the cover of the Midweek magazine, are 3 kids from the P.  they organized a concert and silent auction to raise funds for a homeless shelter (over $25k so far) and bring awareness to the homeless problem in hawaii.

fucking snobs.

it’s amazing what happens when you blog everyday. all 3 of my readers sent in a comment! that’s 100% participation - fuck you NYT! Tombo doesn’t count, since his response to everyone is to blog about how they aren’t right about something.

2/3rds of the comments had to do with the middle class though (as was Tom’s skeptic analysis post), so I thought I’d clarify my point. now, a true hardcore blogger would just keep yapping about whatever else comes to mind, and not revisit old topics to address varying comments, but since the purpose of this whole exercise was to help me communicate better, and not to improve the world by sharing my knowledge (like Tom), I thought it ok to come back to this, to practice adding definition to ambiguity.

so anyway, the middle class - I said it was growing. this is the kind of statement you can never rebuke, or unfortunately, truly support. the reason, is because there exists no objective definition of the term. even wikipedia starts it’s entry by calling it an ambiguous definition. income sounds like it should be an easy indicator, but it’s really not, since in a global economy, your purchasing power is in constant flux, and then there is inflation, taxes, etc. social position and education can be inserted into the analysis, but even that quickly snowballs into a horrible discussion of regional culture, and relative impact (literary PhD in the ghetto probably doesn’t get a lot of respect). ultimately, you end up have to paint the population with a wide brush, and significant overlap occurs.

my definition, while just as loose and ambiguous, is a little easier to apply. if you aren’t worried about how you are getting your next meal, paying your rent/mortgage, and have reasonably stable employment, then you aren’t poor. if you have to make choices about what types of indulgences you entertain, then you aren’t rich. if you are one of the 50% of the population who fall between these lines, welcome to the middle class.

I do believe that there is a mental component to this as well. especially when it comes to climbing out of the ‘poor’ label. assuming that you aren’t encumbered by unreasonable load (3 kids, no legs, etc.), a big part of going from poor to middle should be a matter of choice. if you are an army of one, you should be able to move to where you add value, then work enough jobs to not be poor (which as defined above, means you can eat lunch at work, then go home to sleep for an hour before you head off for job #3). once you train your mind to accept this punishment, it’s hard to slip back into poor territory. being rich takes a little more of everything - you can only work so many minimum wage jobs, and there aren’t enough hours in the day to get rich that way. even guys that make serious cash like the G can still be classified middle class, since it takes all his hours to make his money, and his only entertainment is online dating, and beer drinking - hardly aristocratic. no, being rich is retraining yourself to get over the self serving attitude of ‘learning to fish,’ and somehow getting other people to fish for you - the serve me attitude.  because this turns class into more of a lifestyle, once you achieve a rung on the ladder, it’s pretty hard to go back down.
so, where is the growth?  well, it’s all a matter of applying labels.  who wants to turn poor people into middle class people?  anyone who wants to convince you that you are better off than you really are.  government, big business (walmart, costco, kmart and all their psuedo-luxury goods).  who doesn’t want to be identified as rich?  people just crossing over who don’t want to leave their family behind, or don’t want the burden of carrying their family with them for one.  another group are the ones that just quit while they are ahead - uppper middle class that are ready to be comfortable.  and of course, those that choose to spend their time in other ways - stop to have a family, take care of others, etc.  the growth comes from expanding the coverage of the label for propaganda, and from those that just aren’t leaving the middle due to choice.  also, if you are making a lot of money, but through traditional means, you end up carrying a larger tax burden (such as AMT).  it you are earning money but just paying more taxes, you aren’t rich.

**interestingly, Tom debates my assertion, by pointing out that the gap between rich and poor is growing. coincidentally, that which lies in between 2 things, is often referred to a, “the middle.”

my point of course wasn’t that a middle class exists, or that it’s growing or shrinking.  I was simply stating that while existing in the middle, your life can go stagnant.  this can be a matter of being born in the middle and not doing any climbing of your own (most of the rock - the mob mentality), running out of gas climbing the ladder (the middle is pretty long section of ladder) and just settling in, or simply just not having what it takes, or getting lucky enough to break through to the next level (rich - it’s not for everyone.)  when you stop climbing (or have never climbed), it’s easy to forget that getting to where you were involved choice and sacrifice.  if you want to continue to climb, you have be ready to have that as part of your life again - what are you willing to give up to get more?  especially on the rock, where you have 30 somethings who live with mom & dad, work decent jobs, but spend all their money on cars, beers, and trips to vegas.  instead of using their shortcut to the middle as a tactical advantage to climbing higher, they live with a sense of entitlement, and make choices that cement their position in the middle class.  when they become adults and parents, this warped sense of value turns into a misconstrued view of right and wrong, and they start to draw new class lines (us and them).  this self segregation by the middle is what builds the walls!  while the P is the current target of the middle class rage, you better believe the the Sons of I are also a target - it doesn’t matter what the upper thinks about the middle.  this is some Booker T. Washington shit now - you can’t hold a man down unless you stay down with him!  Booker T., born a half breed slave, who worked his way up to become first leader of Tuskegee University (too much work though - died of exhaustion at 59 - climbing the ladder is tough!)

here’s another interesting way to look at it - for all these people in the middle who see the upper class as elitist or snobbish, how many of them are reaching back to help their low income cousins?  how many of them are acting in a way they feel these upper income snobs should be treating them?

in any case, the thickness of the middle ensures there will be all types.  I’m in the middle, and probably going to stay there unless we leave the rock, I decide to not be an active parent, and treat my wife like a slave - so mostly by choice.  others will stay there because it’s all they are capable of, but the ones I would just like to tone it down a bit, are those that can’t figure out who in their right mind would pay $17,000/ yr for a world class education for their kids, when vegas is just a jackpot away from putting them on easy street!

and just to get back to some numbers,  according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the number of families in the statistical middle of the income distribution tables has gone down, but so has the number of people in the poor bracket - so looking at earnings alone shows that the upper class is actually doing the growing.

my horse beating opinion however remains, that just making money doesn’t make you rich, just like nice rims on your honda doesn’t make your mom disappear from the master bedroom you are waiting to move into.

now that I work at the P (especially in IT, where I can see ALL), my view of this place has definitely changed.  before I was an insider, I think I recognized it mostly as a place of privilege, with academic accomplishment being sometime little more than symptomatic of that.  in retrospect, I never really stopped to formulate a view or opinion, and so the one I carried was built on ignorance, and reflected the opinion of the herd - who probably put as much effort into their view as well.

as an outsider, it’s much easier to deal with something that appears unattainable by casting it in a negative light, and pushing it away.

so let me give you the short version of my new, informed opinion - this place is great, and greatness is very expensive.

the cost becomes an interesting factor, because so many of the uninformed see it as a barrier to entry.  now, maybe you can’t afford to send your kids here, but that’s only a problem if your kids can get in!  if you truly want your kids to be at a place like this, you don’t turn away until the door is shut in your face.  this means, you prepare them, you apply them, and when faced with a  bill, you have to figure out if you can pay it, or not.

if you are rich, then you don’t consider the cost.  you prepare your kids, you apply them, and if they get in, you pay the bill -simple.  oddly enough, if you are dirt poor, and truly value the best education for your kids, then you do the same thing - except when it comes to paying the bill, instead of writing a check, you might ask for a break, ask for some aid, get a second job, etc.  there is little shame in any of this because the objective was perfectly clear all along.

it’s the middle class that tends to scoff at the idea of this place, and ignorantly turns away from it.  why apply my kid if I can’t pay?  that’s the attitude.  I think it’s a common middle class trap that applies in all kinds of situations.  there is a certain level of comfort you have attained, and you can choose to keep working hard to take another step up the ladder, or you can choose to enjoy what you have.  the ignorant part occurs when you forget that you consciously have made that choice, and pretend that those things that are out of reach, are now held out of reach by someone else, and not within reach if you are willing to stop watching TV for a while.

kids on the outside (like I was) learn the prejudice of their family and peers.  it’s certainly not dire like the trap of poverty is, but I think this middle class trap is just as dangerous to the health of the country, because the size of the middle continues to grow, and thus the segment of complacency grows with it.

you know what the kids here think of the kids on the outside - nothing.  not nothing meaning ‘they are nothing’, I mean it doesn’t even cross their  minds.  why waste that kind of time - their parents certainly don’t.  this is the only world they know, so it’s not very special to them.  as an observer, you can recognize how special it is that you can turn out hundreds of kids who believe it a world larger than this island, believe in achieving HUGE things, and are taught that anything is within reach - you just have to find out how to get it.  not a single minute is spent contemplating the kids in the public high school down the street, and how they must be poor to have to go there, or can’t play football so they have to go there, etc.

the P had a huge kindergarten application pool this year, rumored to be about 700 apps for 150 spots.  consider though that while the DOE here ranks 47th out of 50 states in K-12 student achievement (really bad, not really good), and that there are about 13,000 new K students every year (representing between 70% and 75% of eligible children), how can you not choose to explore other options, especially one where a presidential candidate has called for every type of child in the nation to have the type of education he enjoyed there.  with only 150 spots, you can view it as impossible to attain, or, you can recognize how valuable each one of those seats would be.

an article Tom posted states, “In a state that defines people by the high school they attended, Hawaii’s public school students often view Punahou graduates as elitist and scoff at them even into adulthood.”  I think the direction of the emotions described say a lot about what is not written - that individuals and achievers on the rock are culturally shunned for being different than the mob.

who’s snobbing who?

so my mom just returned from a trip to Japan, and on behalf of America, I’d like to apologize to Japan.  I have no specific examples of bad american behavior, but based on her explaining what her version of Japan is like, I’m sure there is plenty to apologize for.  on top of all that, she’s a teacher - I’ve gone into that before.

having worked in a large, international company, and actually spending time with people from other countries, I think I have a good feel for how to behave when there may be some cultural clash.  the first lesson of course, is learning when to recognize a different culture is present!  hint #1 - when you go to another country, there is a chance things will be different!

this applies to industrialized countries of course - if you go to some 3rd world hellhole, survival should be your first priority - being offensive is excusable.

anyway, having traveled the world, I’m sure I’ve made my share of errors, but I’ve witnessed much more horrible examples than I am capable of, and the vast majority are by ignorant americans.

anyway, here are a couple examples of why I’m sure mom embarrased us:

1)  for some reason, she wanted to buy a kimono.  her guided tour took her from Tokyo, to Kyoto - that’s 2 major cities, on a single island, on the same line of train track.  mom’s version of the story says she shopped ‘ALL OVER JAPAN’.  You don’t shop in SF and LA and proclaim that America is out of Hellman’s mayo.

2)  again for the kimono (realize she is on a guided bus tour), for some reason she expected the roadside crap stands that exist wherever tour busses stop to be selling high quality kimono, because of course, they are only made by 100 yr old ladies, stitching them by hand, in between selling a plastic model of Mt. Fuji.  “They only make them out of polyester these days,” mom reports back from Japan.  that’s what ‘They’ told her.

(the kimono she ended up bringing home was a cheap knockoff of an offensive halloween costume.  the obi was a clashing pink strip of ribbon)

3)   “that’s what they are known for,” was the line attached to every piece of whatever mom bought in Japan.  first consider that it’s impossible to attach that label to something from say, Tokyo, but also just as ridiculous to attach it to a specific piece of handmade anything from say, Hakone (which has as part of it’s community, and active artist population.)

I’m kind of sorry she didn’t get to see the real Japan - although going on a guided bus tour should set a certain expectation.   it’s a little annoying to have to listen to her version of Japan, since it’s so comically wrong at times.  but man, I just cringe thinking about the uneasiness she inflicted on people while over there.

so, note to American’s traveling the world: there is practically no case where they weren’t there first - you’re the different one.

my never ending quest to hire a subordinate continues, and it appears the only way to make this happen here is to lower the bar substantially.  this doesn’t mean hiring losers, but it may mean waiting for a superstar to emerge is not realistic.  the person we bring on just won’t have as many tools to work with.

the challenge for me then is to determine which attributes you can give up on, without it being an indicator that their overall value is seriously diminished.  it’s the difference between having a dull blade that can be sharpened, or one that is just made out of wood or plastic, which really limits your capacity for bloodshed.

I’ve also learned the truth about the ‘I can pick up that language if I need it’ lie.  maybe you can pick up the syntax and grammar, but things like best practices, patterns, etc., are things no book or website will give you.  you need to work with people that are good, and even then, you need a strong fundamental base of understanding.  if your start in this field was hacking webpages as the ‘techy guy’ in your old job, I don’t care what else you taught yourself to do all by yourself - chances are, it’s all a big mess.

the biggest issue I have with all the candidates I have seen so far, is that I never make it to the google question.

the google question used to be the microsoft question - those brain teasers you would ask to check problem solving ability, or just problem diagramming skills.  or, you could ask very obscure technical questions (implement strcpy) to see where their base of knowledge lies.  the biggest problem with these questions (among the best candidates), is that everyone has already heard them, and/or everyone has just gotten good at solving brain teasers.  google has since moved to more open ended, solution-less questions (how many phonebooks are there in the seattle area), but even then, once you know not to panic, there is almost no way to outright fail.

you can always ask someone if the know why a solution works (such as the balls and scale question, etc.), but if they don’t know the answer, what have you really learned?  they don’t pursue useless knowledge?  it’s a plus if the do, it’s not a minus if they don’t.

these people though - whew.  I’m stumping them with doozies like, “How can you set up 2 batch jobs, so the that the second job doesn’t start if the first one isn’t finished?”  like the google question, this one has many many answers that are not wrong.  a good example of a wrong answer though (I have learned), is “that sounds like a unix-y thing - I don’t do unix.”

ultimately it’s the apathy most employees have for their careers here on the rock is also present in the tech market.  with no real options for rapid climb in return for hard work, people are content to do what their told, and learn when sent to training.  employers are more than happy to not train anyone, and just keep paying ‘analysts’ $35k/yr to write procedural code that does nothing special.

no diamonds in this rough, and no one to throw google questions back and forth with…

time is flying by - with the holidays, the kid, and life in general, everything starts to blur together.  nothing like another reality check to make you stop and write a blog entry.

first, the highs - my blood pressure and cholesterol!  hahahaha.  not really funny, but unfortunately true.  I must have passed the magic age where youth heals all bruises over night, and processing a 12 pack of tacos is just something that happens.  the cholesterol thing really sucks, because I like to eat animals, and apparently that is not good if you want to avoid heart attacks.

to address this state, I’m trying to cut down on land animal meat - maybe once a day in small portions.  right now, this is actually having a negative effect because 1) I am constantly hungry, 2) rapid weight loss as I search for new sources of protein cause me to lose muscle mass, thus raising my body fat %, and 3) can’t take a decent shit!

that last one REALLY sucks.

other medical projects in the works;  abdominal tear (high hernia) repair scheduled for February,  and GI consult after that to confirm that my shits are diet/age related, and not due to some kind of ass cancer (again, not funny, as cancer is very common in my family, and my uncle and grandmother both have/had colon cancer).

my physicians hope is that I will be lucky enough at the GI consult to warrant an early colonoscopy, where they shove a camera through your ass.  I say through, because they don’t stop at simple penetration, and continue to violate you until they are actually near your throat.  fuck.

there are couple nice things.  the baby is doing well - almost 3.  school is treating her right, we just did a dress up day so we have a kimono shot for the 3 year blessing, and she had her first hula class.  very easy to have your life consumed by activities.  still need to work on balancing all this stuff better.

finally, the low.  out of the blue I get one of those calls - you know - one of those calls.  my neighbor who I grew up with was found in a coma, and they were going to unplug him because his organs were shutting down.  I JUST saw the guy, and now I got a phone call basically saying he was going to die within the hour.  what the fuck man.

now, while terribly tragic, no one is really over reacting.  the reason?  this day was coming for a long time.  this dude lost his way a long time ago, and was running the streets doing drugs and whatever else for the last 20 years at least.  still though, when he was home, you always wanted to be around him.  kind of a hawaii thing I guess - true extended ohana.  if he came home for christmas, all us kids could sit on the wall in front of the house, and it would be like we were young again.  in fact, he was home this last christmas, and I was jokingly calling him Jesus - the Christmas miracle.

as a parent, this is a reminder that you cannot afford to fuck up.  not that his mom did anything wrong, but like my friend who just got his daughter back from rehab says - you only get the first 18 years.  if they are off the track at that point, it ends tragically.  even at just 18 years old, his ability to correct his daughters path is doubtful.

once again, hug your kids folks.  and check for ass cancer if you can.

given the fact that the crap-ton girl is going to be losing her job this christmas, and the fact that I am currently dealing with the retard employees at Sprint, I’d like to ammend/clarify my comments from the previous post.

first of all, not everyone needs to be CEO of something.  it’s like the myth of college prep in public schools - you aren’t failing at anything if you don’t apply/don’t get in.  this chick was good at her job, she appeared to be enjoying it, and the company was benefiting.  too bad they have to shut down now.

second, a bad employee will totally fuck up whatever value you offer a customer.  I use Sprint because of the amazing SERO plan I am on.  my Treo 700p is good PDA phone.  Sprint customer service (telephone) is pretty good too.  put together, it’s a killer combo.  I had a problem though that required me to walk into a retail store/service center, and the fuckers that staff the place are so useless, that after 1 hour, I was ready to say fuck it, and go iPhone.  it would cost me twice as much per month, and I’d have to be an Apple fanboy, but it would give me a way to escape the hell that was Sprint.

so in summary, ms. crap-ton got me to spend more money at CompUSA in 10 minutes than I had spent there in the last 5 years at least (and I spend a ton on technology every year), while Retard McDickinass at Sprint almost made me spend $600 on a device and double my monthly costs WITH ANOTHER VENDOR because he was prick.

so I went in to CompUSA today.  usually, I avoid stores like that like the plague since the prices suck, most of the employees are stupid* and/or don’t care about what they are doing, and even on the rock, the internet makes most small item brick and mortars obsolete.

I was going to be in the vicinity though due to an issue with my Sprint phone (another story), and thought I’d try them to solve a quest I’ve been on.

I’ve got a lot of DVDs.  To store them, I tried the binder route, but that’s expensive, and it’s a bitch to handle a 200 DVD binder.  from there, I resorted to spindles.  mostly because I’m lazy.  the problem with the spindle is that it’s impossible to find anything, and searching through the stack fucks up all the disks.

some dude online showed how he used those vinyl/tyvek sleeves to store his entire collection, including art, in neat alphabetized boxes.  you can’t ‘page’ through a collection, but it’s easy enough to shuffle through them, they are all protected, and might actually take up less space than a couple of binders.  all I needed to try this out was a couple hundred sleeves.

what does this have to do with a crap-ton?  I’m getting there.

I actually rolled in there yesterday (the first time I went to Sprint), and I gotta say, the store has cleaned up a bit.  not as much ‘crap’ as I remember, but still, nothing compelling.  it’s not like Fry’s where I could go and browse.  I went looking for the sleeves, asked a couple of clerks (what? I don’t know what that is), found one guy who knew what I was talking about, but insisted they haven’t had any for 6 months.

oh well, no surprise.  amazon will come through as always.  got them priced, ready to order, but wait - my fucking phone is still broken, so I have to go back to Sprint.  thought I’d browse the CompUSA site just for fun, when lo and behold - 200 sleeves for $16.  now if only someone there could find them…

I roll back in, and let me tell you - the people that work at a place like this during the daylight hours are scary.  these are the ones NOT going to school or some other shit during the day.  this is it for them.  that said, I was pleasantly surprised by the girl that noticed I was looking for something, and offered to help.

now, she wasn’t hot or anything, but she’s already well ahead of the game by appearing interested, and offering to help.  I tell her my story, give her the item number I pulled off the internet, and she started her own search.  not on the shelf (which is where the first dude stopped), so she decided to also look at the website to get a better idea of what she was looking for.

about this time I was wondering, what the fuck is this girl doing working here?  I’m pretty sure the pay sucks, the company is known to shit on it’s employees, and she must take all kinds of abuse from idiots who go to the store and ask dumb questions.

anyway, she finds the pic, looks up some shit in another computer, and discovers there should be hundreds of these things in the store, and figures they must be ‘in the back.’  so, like a champ, she says she’ll get them, instead of feeding me the normal bullshit line, ‘all we have is on the shelf.’

it’s on her way to the back that she drops the line - “I’ll go get you some, we have a crap-ton back there.’

I can’t explain why, but for whatever reason, I was very sad for her at that moment.  she’s still doing a great job, clearly one of the best employees that store will ever see, but like her co-workers, this is as good as it’s going to get.  Meg Whitman doesn’t stand up to deliver the annual report and drop lines like, “this holiday season, we did a crap-ton of business.”

there is a line in the sand, and successful people fall on one side, and everyone else on the other.  certainly, there are different levels of success, and being on the other side doesn’t mean you live in poverty, but ‘crap-ton’ puts you on the side you don’t want to be on.

just goes to show you, nothing good can come out of a visit to the Sprint service center.

* by stupid, I mean not as smart as me when it comes to technology.  it’s a black and white definition.

so I’m still struggling with hiring a developer to be my slave, and I gotta tell you, the more people I talk to, the more depressed I get.  it’s amazing how poor the candidate pool is here on the rock.

I think it’s fair to say that most college programs that are spitting out ‘developers’ do a pretty shitty job.  the reason is, no one is teaching them and real CS topics, so a solid foundation in problem solving, solution design, and contruction is missing.  this fascination with toolkits and frameworks is killing the american worker.

there certainly are schools that don’t fuck around.  an engineer from Carnegie Mellon, MIT, Cal Tech, etc. will certainly be able to refactor a solution to a sort problem in 12 different ways.  the mediocre fools I get all have the same answer - ‘I can do that in 5 minutes with XXX’

that may be fine, but here is where the interview always falls apart.  no matter how simple the problem, I can amend it by saying, ‘what if you have 10 minutes?’ and these fuckers are stumped.  there is nothing worse than having nothing to say.  it’s just barely worse than spouting a bunch of BS about moving on in the methodology, but nothing is the absolute worst!  hell, you could even say, ‘use the 5 minutes to chug 2 beers,’ and you’re ahead of the game.

here’s an example of a problem I like to start with - gives me lots of directions to go in:  put together a web based lookup app, that reads from a single table in a database, and presents the results in a table that I can then filter, sort, or page.  depending on the candidate, I may hold off on the extras, just to see if they automatically think to include it, or to give them a chance to ask.

for the record, I’m doing a lot of .NET, and yes, in 5 minutes I could have this running without writing a single line of code.  but what happens if I have 10 minutes - or really - what happens if I have a 10 minute problem?

these people that rely on their toolkits, classlibs, plugins, or whatever else they are using can’t solve problems.  all they can do is match square pegs with corresponding holes.  this isn’t even about understanding the science/mechanics behind the requests.  fundamentally, if you don’t know what the technology is trying to do, then you can’t make it do your bidding.

I don’t care if up till now, you’ve never had a problem painting all your data on one page.  the fact is, there are times when you will have to sort through millions of rows - it’s not done daily here, but it’s done, and you can’t rely on a select statement that included every column using a string compare and a stack of %%s!

it is very clear to me though, that the local employers shoulder most of this blame.  their is no candidate pool, because no one is developing candidates - us included.  what I need to do, is stop trying to look for a great candidate to fill my one seat, and get a little more money (also known as ‘investment’) and fill 2 with people to develop.  eventually, one will move on, because I won’t treat them the same, and our contribution to the market will be a candidate with a couple more skills, and an empty seat to fill, without losing any total productivity I need for business continuity.

ultimately, good people aren’t out looking at job postings - they are out creating roles for themselves, or being recruited to do specific work.  we don’t have the sponsorship to overpay a great candidate, so we have to develop a couple that show potential, but NEVER settle for someone mediocre, that just managed to fail to suck at their interview.

bleh.